Hodge Podge
by Gray Glube
Summary: Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Hodgepodge  
**Author**: grayglube  
**Summary**: Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda  
**Rating**: M

* * *

**_"Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering."_**

Her grandmother used to talk to her grandfather while she crocheted, her grandfather had been dead for as long as Violet had been alive at the time. Her mother could feel her brother moving even after they scraped and suction the dead fetus out of her womb.

Violet learns to crochet only after her grandmother has died one brisk day in fall while everyone is out, she's sitting with the old woman on the couch, she's thirteen and her grandmother doesn't explain things very well so she has to watch.

They move into a new house and at night Violet can hear a baby crying and one day in the chill of an air conditioned hallway she watches a boy drip blood all over her shoes.

She utters a monosyllabic 'gross' and he stops walking, turns and she's stuck staring back at the shock on his face.

There's another gruesome ghost that's realized what her only discernible innate talent is.

But this one isn't granny or an underdeveloped baby brother.

This one has bullet holes and blood splatter on his face.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title**: Hodgepodge  
**Author**: grayglube  
**Summary**: Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda  
**Rating**: M

* * *

_**You made me love you **_  
_**I didn't want to do it, **_  
_**I didn't want to do it **_  
_**You made me love you and all the time you knew it **_  
_**I guess you always knew it. **_  
_**You made me happy sometimes, you made me glad **_  
_**But there were times, **_  
_**Dear, you made me feel so bad**_  
_**You made me sigh for, **_  
_**I didn't want to tell you **_  
_**I didn't want to tell you **_  
_**I want some love that's true, yes I do, deed I do, you know I do**_  
_**Give me, give me, give me what I cry for you know you got the brand of kisses that I'd die for You know you made me love you**_

Constance

After Halloween things change in the strangest of ways for Violet, distance grows between her and Tate and in that distance a bridge is built between her and Constance that's not as unsettling as it might have been otherwise.

Addie is dead and Constance knows Violet might not be far behind.

Girlhood is a difficult time, she knows. Violet will need all the help her unfortunate parents cannot provide.

All Constance now, is time. Days that seem endless, a television devoid of ethnic Latino cartoons and talking animals.

One night with Billie Dean smoking a cigarette on the left side of her kitchen table the younger blonde starts and looks at the backdoor.

"Something's wrong."

Constance arrives, watches Tate sob with Violet in his lap in the tub, she dumps ipecac down her throat with his help and sets her to bed, next door. Temptation has always been too much for her boy and she doesn't trust him not to smother her.

She takes Violet in, tea and cigarettes after school, walking little mongrel dogs on the weekends, Long Island ice tea and card games during the summer.

Constance loves her children, Tate is her child…but sometimes, and she'll will breathe deeply or take a long sip, he is an overpoweringly antagonistic and petty child.

Billie Dean consoles her and Violet, helps her accept the reality of her favorite son being what he is, and helps Violet understand what Billie thinks is some sort of gift when it's really just the malevolent existence of the house next door.

Violet scoffs but Constance is beginning to see that there may be something there.

They talk about his faults.

Discovery always comes too late.

Violet walks in, her mother is home from the hospital, with and without a baby. She had heard the ambulance come during the night, caterwauls and waves of red light around her kitchen at eleven thirty at night.

"How is she?"

"Doped."

She dislikes the flippancy, the vulgar language but Violet is young and the daughter of a charlatan and an ineffectual housewife.

"It's for the best." She nods to herself.

Violet seethes in some well-steeped worry and anger over something because girls her age are always so unnecessarily angry, finally she says "You're a grandmother."

"Excuse me?" She pauses with the ice she's dropping into her glass.

"He raped my mother."

She doesn't understand.

"How would he have done that? When?"

Violet sighs before smiling sardonically at the table her head low and eyes sticking like needle points, "I thought she was crazy, she said a man in a rubber suit raped her, she thought it was my dad when it happened but my dad said it wasn't him. He threw it out. The suit was in the attic when we got the house. And Tate put it on and did it."

"How do you…know?"

"Nora was in the baby's room. She told me. _Tate_ told me."

She lets the ice drop from her fingers, they are numb now. Her mind spins, webs, dissolves. She takes a heavy sip, "Well, what would you like me to do about it?"

Violet doesn't answer, she just starts to cry. Eventually Constance sends her home following the press of a cold washcloth to calm the red blotchiness marring the girl's face into something ugly and mean.

What she does is confront, confirm, and console in the aftermath.

It is late, again, nights later and Violet is on her sofa in the sitting room smoking, her sweater smells like an ashtray, her hair is a mess and her disposition is poisonous.

"You should be home with your mother. She's going to need you there."

"I've been thinking about what he did and you know what I realized?"

"I don't know, I came down to make a drink."

"You know why he chose my mom? Because he could fool her. Make her think it was my dad. But what if he could have done it to me? He would have."

"Men will always do that to women, if given the chance, if there is no way for them to be punished Violet. There's a fact for you. That dower thing in the basement kept at him, I couldn't be there. Part of the fault is mine. I'm sorry."

"I just…"

"It's in their nature, they can't help it."

The girl smiles and nods and takes in the truth that men are in most ways useless and disappointing and awful creatures.

Violet

It's not forgiveness he's looking for, just a way to get back to where she'll show him a little tenderness again.

He tells her he'll do anything, to just talk to him. He says please.

"You keep her away from my brother."

It should be easy for him to do that much, her brother is small and sleepy on his blanket, she has him set down next to her on the floor.

"I want you to leave me alone, I don't want you around me or my mother. I don't want to have to make you."

"Okay."

She stands up and he's walking forward, she holds up a hand and presses it out to stop his progress,

"Fine." He sighs, comes closer anyway, she look down her brother. Standing up makes her feel like they might step on him, it makes her uneasy that part of her wants to so badly.

"I'm sorry…," He's got arms around her and as good as it feels it doesn't feel as good as it used to.

"Violet. I just tho…-"

He smells her hair and it's intensely awful how it makes him feel.

"Stop. It's fine, so get off…" she pushes gently at his reluctance to uncoil his limbs, "Come on, off." He does, for a moment it feels like he won't. "And leave me alone. I want to be alone."

"…for how long?"

She smiles, slow and strange. Like an animal that doesn't seem quite right might make its mouth move in a way that seems too human.

"You raped my mother and got her pregnant and it killed my dad's baby and there's a ghost who wants to kill the only thing that is keeping my mother from shooting herself in the head. Right now I wish you really were dead but you aren't and can't be so I'm just going to pretend like you are."

"Violet,"

Again her hand goes up like punctuation at the end of a sentence or a human traffic signal.

"When my mother is happy again we can talk, so until then act like you're dead and keep everything around here quiet and nice and pleasant because if it isn't and something happens to my mom I'll leave and burn the fucking house down."

"Violet you can't do that. I wouldn't let you."

She doesn't doubt him, and she's already come to the conclusion that one day she's going to have to leave forever, the metaphorical husband going out for cigarettes.

"Don't give me a reason to want to then."

"…"

There's a confusion of noise from the next bedroom.

The valium her dad gave her mom has worn off.

"She's up, I have to go play mom now."

She swoons down and bounces her brother up with a cooing smile and a babble of baby talk already gone back to pretending Tate's a ghost she can't see.

Tate

He finds her college applications, Boston, New York City, Pittsburg. He makes a decision. His mother used to tell him he was so indecisive, he's only doing what she's always wanted. Grown a backbone.

She used to tell him the mongoloid had more nerve than him.

Violet's been looking for a way to die since she was fifteen, she just didn't acknowledge it, but with the future looming so perceivably close to her now instead of then, it's easy. Very easy. She's eighteen and beautiful and he loves her, he loves her so fucking much.

He's sitting beside her body on the bed when she walks in, a ring of purple shadows around her throat.

"You're so stupid. You just lost your only leverage."

She rubs her throat with her fingertips and all he wants to do is kiss her, to celebrate. They're going to be together forever and the prospect is mystifying.

"…"

"I'm dead and now you really have to do exactly what I say."

"I've always done what you said."

She makes a sound and rolls her eyes and steps closer, "I guess you're right, I couldn't tell you to stop strangling me while you strangled me because you were strangling me, you're right, I'm wrong."

He can't look at her, sh**e**'s like the sun, burning him up with her eyes.

"Now I'm going to tell you what to do, and you're going to do it, because if you don't then it's going to kill my parents. Not having an explanation."

He thinks she might kiss him, he tips forward and down to accomadate his height to suit hers and her fingernails prick his jawline, "You're going to fuck it."

"What?"

"My body. We'll make it look like Bundy came in and did a number to me."

Her voice sounds like gravel.

"I can't."

"It's still warm and I'm not feeling amorous right now, so this might be your only chance to get it in."


	3. Chapter 3

**Title**: Hodgepodge  
**Author**: grayglube  
**Summary**: Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda  
**Rating**: M

* * *

_**"Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything. They make you feel so alive that you'd follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix."**_

It sends her swooning when he tells her he's always liked the smell of cigarettes and inhales hard against her sweater clad shoulder. One person out of the million that turn their noses up when she walks into class reeking of ashtrays and matchsticks or gosh and god forbid she has a clipped one in her pack in her jacket and the smell seeps into the lockers next to hers and she has to deal with the bullshit of their owners giving her dirty looks and snide remarks every time she goes to get a textbooks or a pen.

Her kiss is black coffee and Marlboro Reds, taste bud scorching and acridly bitter and sometimes it's like a broken fuck, brutal and pained and wrenching.

She's got cold sweats and a migraine like metallic sharpness in her sinuses, and her abdomen is full of panging spikes of absolute agony.

It's Saturday morning at 4am and she's smoked all her butts down to the filter in the ashtray hidden under her dresser and repercolated the coffee left into a horrendously vile brew of old dregs and stale water. She's out of smokes and coffee grounds, she can't sleep in her crashed withdrawal state from the least severe of addictive substances.

He watches her unable to get comfortable and shifting and turning and hissing out angry streams of obscenities from behind the blue and green colored glass doors outside the sitting room in the biting chill of fall tempest winds blowing in daybreak and the scent of earthworms, decaying leaf piles, and tiny white mushrooms.

There's a simple childlike chant of nonsensical sounds from behind the hedges. Muted by distance and a screened back door he still knows it's Adelaide muttering to the mutts in their tiny boxes, still caged for the night until five rolls around.

He peeps around the edge of the hedge and singsongs until the back door opens and the giddy girl stamps out, all glee and bug eyes, and all too pleased to be useful for the task he has in mind. The girl pilfers a bag of exotic Bombay blend of some coffee whose name he can't pronounce correctly for lack of skill with accents and a pack of Pall Malls from a carton left on the kitchen counter and asks why she did it.

"Violet doesn't feel good."

"And those will make her feel better?"

"Uh-huh. Sure."

"Is Violet your girlfriend?"

"You'd have to ask her."

"Okay."

And she trots inside with heavy feet and a curler falling loose from her headscarfed hair-do.

He's out in the portico and she's kicking her feet at the kitchen counter, he knocks on the door.

"Hey!"

"Morning."

"What's this?"

"Open it."

"Should I ask how you knew?"

"Do you want to?"

"Not too many good mysteries left."

"You would think of it that way. I know they're not your brand."

"Don't care, I'm dying, and not so picky."

"You look like shit."

"I know. Stick around?"

"I'll be here."

She comes out half-delirious on lack of sleep and coquettish with a mug that's too big for her tiny hands trying to unwrap the small box in her hand but struggling with the cellophane. He does it for her and puts a cigarette in his mouth to light it and holds it out to her.

Her grin is manic and she pops the filter into her mouth with girlish glee, it makes him smile and decide she's cutest when tired and feeling sick.

She rubs her bare elbows and arms.

"It's nipples out."

"It's nipples out?"

"It means really cold."

"I get it."

"Mine are about to freeze off."

"You should wear a real shirt then, and pants."

"They're long john's and thermal and really warm."

"And your shirt is a handkerchief."

"Shut up."

"Here."

He hands her his sweater.

"Thank you."

They sit on the ledge

"Feel better?"

She puts her head on his shoulder, "No. My head hurts and I'm cold and I'm in nicotine withdrawal."

"Smoke up."

"Move over. Not like that."

She puts his back against the pillar and straddles his lap, singes hair with the business end of her cigarette, her legs curl around him and her knees press up into his armpits.

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to squeeze you to death."

"Vice grip."

"You're ruining my whole snuggle vibe."

"Didn't know you were the snuggle type."

"I'm cold."

"Want to go inside?"

"I'm comfortable." She flicks away her butt and slides her icy hands up his bare ribs.

"Your hands are cold."

"Really?"

"Icy."

"You're warm."

"You're part octopus."

"I'm a boa constrictor."

"Lovely impersonation."

"Representation, an impersonation is about a person."

"You are so messed up."

"I haven't slept since yesterday, I'm wonky."

"It's pretty appealing."

"Mmmm."

"You're like a cat."

"Uh-huh."

"Too lazy to talk?"

"Mhmm."

"Wanna go inside?"

"After they leave."

"Too tired to be my look out?"

"Yup. My eyes are blurry."

"You need another cigarette."

"In a little while. You smell good."

"You feel good."

"I know."

"Conceited."

"Self-assured." She boasts as they disengage from sleepy, peck kisses and stand up with limbs tingling from pins and needle, she holds out a hand, "Come upstairs."

She slips under her blankets and whines that they're cold, "I'll keep you warm." He assures. His hands are everywhere there is skin and she asks him, "What are you doing?"

Only what he think he can get away with since despite the caffeine and nicotine taking the edge off she's still near delirious from lack of sleep and much more pliable and soft when she's tired.

"Tell me to stop, if you want."

His mouth is throat and she's squirming.

"What are you doing?"

He's touching a finger to the hard point of her nipple, rubs back and forth with his thumb and asks her if they hurt because of how cold it was outside.

"Ow, that hurts, jerk. Quit it. It's like I'm dealing with a different you." But she lets him cup her tiny breast, palm warm and nice."

"Different?"

"There's sensitive, deep, moody Tate and then this."

"Yeah? What's this?"

"Evil twin."

He laughs and she lets him touch her all over, she touches him, they fall asleep in her bed taking advantage of the reprieve they've been offered.


	4. Chapter 4

**Title**: Hodgepodge  
**Author**: grayglube  
**Summary**: Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda  
**Rating**: M

* * *

_**"There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors."**_

I.

They grow up together and one day they explore the sump at the end of the block, there's a hole on the side of the chain-link fence the next block over. Someone's hung a tire swing whose rope gave way, the tire leans against a tree and gathers mucky rain water, a breeding pool for mosquitoes in the endless summer season.

It smells like pine trees and sun and sandlot.

They explore the one on their block one day when the older kids are playing basketball down the street. They ride bikes on the well worn dirt bike humps and go crashing off path into tree barks and sharp stones. They find the remnants of a rained on porno mag. Pages stuck together by mud and ink turned blue and yellow from running water blurring the colors.

The inside of her pelvis feels warm, a ball of melting something.

II.

They go to school together and she dies during an after-prom party at his house. It's a fall down the stairs facilitated by Barcardi and some choice pharmaceuticals.

Her up-do is caked hard by hairspray and blood.

Her parents have money, so do his. They settle on a fair price.

But Violet Harmon sits in her prom dress on the steps in the basement, dead, pretty, complaining that her head hurts and he can hear her every time he walks by the basement door.

III.

Moving is tough but it works out alright. Her mom is on tour again and they find a new house. The light is different and so are the beaches and the house is wood instead of steel and she likes it.

She's always wanted an upstairs bedroom. Sliding down the banister is hard work but she likes slipping across the floors in her socks.

The ghosts are okay. Her grandmother used to come around after she died so it's not as if it's a new development.

She's never really had friends. Not really.

Ghosts are lonely too.

They make okay friends. They come and go like cats.


End file.
